August 2000

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Features

Is Global Warming Harmful to Health?

Computer models indicate that many diseases will surge as the earth¿s atmosphere heats up. Signs of the predicted troubles have begun to appear.

By Paul R. Epstein

How Green are Green Plastics?

By Steven C. Slater and Tillman U. Gerngross

Fountains of Youth: Early Days in the Life of a Star

To make a star, gas and dust must fall inward. So why do astronomers see stuff streaming outward?

By Thomas P. Ray

Form from Fire

Self-propagating heat waves can engender new and improved materials, but only recently have researchers found ways to monitor these ultraquick chemical reactions

By Arvind Varma

The Universe's Unseen Dimensions

The visible universe could lie on a membrane floating within a higher-dimensional space. The extra dimensions would help unify the forces of nature and could contain parallel universes

By Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos and Georgi Dvali

Male Sexual Circuitry

By Irwin Goldstein

Birth of the Modern Diet

Ever wonder why dessert is served after dinner? The origins of modern Western cooking can be traced to ideas about diet and nutrition that arose during the 17th century

By Rachel Laudan

Departments

From the Editor

If you can't Stand the Heat...

Letters

Letters

Erratum

Recommended

Hidden World

Anti Gravity

Measure for Measure

50, 100 & 150 Years Ago

50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: Zeppelin's First Flight and Observing a Firestorm

Wonders

Laws of Calorie Counting

In Brief

Data Points: The Need for Zzz's

Profile

Blue Chip

Mathematical Recreation

A Fractal Guide to Tic-Tac-Toe

Amateur Scientist

How to Rear a Plankton Menagerie

Science and the Citizen

Global Positioning

Gene Scenes

Magnetic Anomalies

More Than the Best Medicine

Uncontrolled Burn

Island Survivors

Cosmic Cartography

Size Doesn't Matter

DNA Junk and Lupus

A Dose of Our Own Medicine

Atomic-Force Geckos

Sea Change for Tides

By the Numbers

The U.S. Population Race

Working Knowledge

Focusing in a Flash

Connections

The Grand Plan

Departments

End Point

Cyber View

Circles of Trust

Technology and Business

Different Stripes

No Resistance

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